And they had reason to be proud,
after their own notion of glory. For that boot had carried them
through desert and through cities, over mountain ranges, through
trackless forests, from Africa even into Britain here, to be the
conquerors of the then known world; and, wherever the tramp of that
boot had been heard, it had been the sound, not of the good news of
peace, but of the evil news of war. Isaiah of old, watching for the
deliverance of the Jews from captivity, heard in the spirit the
footsteps of the messengers coming with the news that Cyrus was about
to send the Jews home to their own land, and cried, 'How beautiful
upon the mountains are the feet of them that bring good tidings, that
publish peace!' But the tramp of the Roman armies had as yet brought
little but bad tidings, and published destruction. Men slain in
battle, women and children driven off captive, villages burnt, towns
sacked and ruined, till wherever their armies passed--as one of their
own writers has said--they made a desert, and then called that peace.
So had the Roman soldier marched over the world, and conquered it.
And now Christ's soldiers were beginning their march over the world,
that they might conquer it by fulfilling Isaiah's prophecy. They
were going forth, with their feet shod with the good news of Peace;
to treat all men, not as their enemies, not as their slaves, but as
their brothers; and to bring them good news, and bid them share in
it,--the good news that God was at peace with them, and that they
might now be at peace with their own consciences, and at peace with
each other, for all were brothers in Jesus Christ their Lord.
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